BigRedX

The scale length of any bass is the distance from the nut to the 12th fret x 2.

Nothing wrong with an 80s look, but very few of the artists picture there have a good one.

I still own the first bass that I bought back in 1981. It doesn't get a lot of use these days. The 4 basses that I do use most of the time now were bought at various times over the past 15 years. TBH since I got my first Gus back in 2002, I haven't seriously used anything else except for the Warwick StarBass I got a few years ago.

Early 70s Glam Rock. I had absolutely no interest in any kind of music until I heard T.Rex 1n 1971. After that I was hooked. However I didn't start learning to play the guitar for another 2 years, and didn't get my first bass until 1981.

IME research is almost completely worthless. The only thing that matters is how a product performs when you are actually using it. Only then can you make an educated decision.

[quote name='Mykesbass' timestamp='1495199210' post='3302076'] Could you make the introduction a little longer... ©Eric Morecambe [/quote] IME the introduction tape is always way too long, so either there is far too much "atmospheric" music and an empty stage which eventually kills the anticipation, or the band are stood about looking embarrassed waiting to start. Unless your band is massively famous with an audience of thousands of adoring fans at every gig, the intro should be 1 minute max plus whatever time you need to appear on stage and plug your guitar in.

[quote name='Lozz196' timestamp='1494535520' post='3296872'] I`ve seen bands come on to instrumental music of their own, the theme to The Flintstones, the theme to The Godfather, things like that. All great but to me I always think that the impact should come from the band itself, hit `em hard & fast and tell `em you mean business with your own music. [/quote] The number of times I have seen bands mis-judge the length of their pre-recorded intro and the amount of time required to get on stage and plug in their instrument, so consequently get on far too early and then proceed to stand around on stage looking faintly embarrassed while they wait for the appropriate moment for the first number to start.

[quote name='Roland Rock' timestamp='1495020683' post='3300476'] Was that in Carrington? I think a couple of my mates were at that gig. I didn't hear any complaints about poor dispersion [/quote] Yes it was. And I think bass cab dispersion is the least of your worries in room approximately 3m x 3m in size!

[quote name='cheddatom' timestamp='1495023970' post='3300536'] It's probably mainly the rhythm that you're messing up? I find I have to be able to figure out exactly where the bass notes go, in terms of rhythm, in relation to the drum beat/vocal/lead riff. Kind of like when you're first learning to play drums, and you have to figure out "this kick drum goes with the right hand here, but in between the right hand here" etc. [/quote] I had a song to learn recently where the bass line to the chorus had very obviously been written and recorded before the vocals. I had no problem learning the line and it was a great tune on its own, but trying to play it with the vocals was very hard work indeed as the rhythms were completely different.

[quote name='Roland Rock' timestamp='1495003092' post='3300268'] I can only think of one occasion in the last several years of gigging where bass wasn't through a PA (OP that was at JT Soar, and you know how tiny that is) [/quote] I think the lat time I didn't have my bass in the PA was when we played in Mr Venom's front room: [IMG]http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n249/BigRedX/Dick%20Venom%20Live/1001267_10151596597111339_1619030816_n_zps06fe18c8.jpg[/IMG]

1. Listen to the track concentrating on just the bass line. 2. When you've got it turn off the track and sing the bass line to yourself. 3. Work out what to play on the bass from your singing and then write it down in whatever form works best for you. 4. Practice playing the bass line. Only go back to playing along with the track when you can do it without really thinking about it. It might be worth also practicing the lead in and out to this section on its own first. HTH

[quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' timestamp='1494935646' post='3299699'] IME that description applies to at least 80% of bass players. Besides, having a rig with good dispersion doesn't require jumping through multiple hoops, so why not? [/quote] That's not my experience at all. The majority of my gigs are small venues (under 250) but I'm struggling to recall the last time my bass wasn't DI'd into the PA. On several of the more recent gigs, I've been asked to turn down my amp to such a degree in order to get a balanced and controllable sound FoH that the bass in the the foldback has been louder than what has been coming out of my cabs. It has got to the point where AFAIAC my rig is mostly there for show at gigs and is only really used at band rehearsals. I'd love to be able to go in-ears but I don't see it as an option for small bands that rely on the venue's PA system.

Following on from some rather heated discussions about the merits of certain bass cabs over the past few months, some of the arguments have got me thinking. In particular the question of dispersion. The physics of a lot of the advice seems to make sense - don't mix your cone sizes without cross-overs and the arguments for stacking your drivers vertically rather than horizontally, but the more I think about them, the less they seem to be relevant to real-world gigging situations. A lot of it comes down to what we actually use our bass cabs for? Since 2010, I can recall less than a handful of times when the bass wasn't put through the PA, and all of those were in rooms so small that most of the audience would have problems getting 33° off-axis let alone 45°! Conversely, for the rest of the band to be able to hear me properly without help from the foldback, I'd need speakers/cabs with a decent 90°+ off-axis response. On most stages I'm pretty much stuck in one place, and on the bigger stages that have room for actual movement there is nearly always excellent foldback so most of the time the band is relying more on the foldback to hear my bass than it is on my cabs. If I'm being honest with myself, my bass cabs are mostly there for two reasons - for show and bring the controls on my amp and BassPod Rack up to an easily accessible height. If I could guarantee that every gig I played had suitable foldback, I'd probably ditch the cabs and amp altogether and just bring the BassPod (or upgrade to a Helix). Apart from bassist who regularly play decent-sized rooms without PA support, is dispersion an important consideration. From where I'm standing I can't see (hear) it!

My latest band The Death Notes are in the middle of producing our next EP and we need someone good to do the mixing. We have all the parts for the 4 tracks recorded and need someone to take these and produce some truly excellent mixes. The band were fairly happy with the standard of the last mix (although I'm not convinced it's anywhere near as good as it could be) but with the length of time it took due to changes it ended up being very expensive. This time I'd like to give the work to an engineer/producer who is sympathetic to the style of music - post-punk with goth and shoegaze influences - rather than someone who's just doing it as another paying job, and consequently can get us what we want in a couple of sessions. Please don't suggest we do it ourselves. I've got plenty of experience recording and mixing, but I now know that my ambitions are beyond my abilities. We are happy to pay for the right person to do this. Files are in OMF format so software compatibility won't be an issue. Ideally we'd want somewhere local to Nottingham as some of us will want to attend at least one of the sessions. The last EP is available listen to on [url=http://thedeathnotes.com]Bandcamp[/url] so you can get a rough idea of what they did last time and the style of the music. Thanks!

IME musicians who tune too often do it simply because they can now that everyone has an electronic tuner somewhere in their signal chain or attached to the headstock of their guitar. When I started gigging in the early 80s electronic tuners were only for bands with record deals. We tuned up to one of the synths before we played, and that was it. I can't recall any of my band members sounding horribly out of tune at any point later during the set. Later on when I was playing in a synth band we did buy a tuner, but it was mainly to check that the analogue synths were in tune with the pre-recorded backing tape. Again we would tune up once during the sound check, and as long as the synths were left switched on they wouldn't need to be tuned again. When we finally got digital synths, the tuner was left at home. When I went back to playing bass and guitar, I bought guitars with locking bridges, nuts and machine heads. Again check the tuning at the sound check and make any slight adjustments as required. After that I never found the need to retune during the gig. And none of the basses I've used live have ever needed anything but the smallest readjustment of tuning between use (unless I had managed to knock the machine heads taking it out of its case). I used to play with a guitarist who had a novel approach to the problem of tuning during the set. He was a heavy user of string bends and vibrato bridges, but he managed simply by having two guitars which were tuned just before playing - using the tuner in my rig as he didn't have one of his own. He would then play one guitar for the first half of the set and swap to the other for the second half. I never once noticed any tuning problems during a gig. When you don't have the ability to pedantically check your tuning between every song, you become a lot more relaxed about having to be "perfectly" in tune all the time.

Bear in mind that electronic kits are only quiet in relation to the noise that an acoustic kit makes. I've played in bands with a variety of electronic drum kits over the years and have yet to find one where the noise of the sticks hitting the pads don't mask the drum sounds at anything less than very loud hifi volumes. Also you will probably have to find a way isolating the bass drum pedal from the floor, especially if you intend to use in any room that has another one beneath it.

I don't like the term much either. However, I also think that if you play in a band with someone you consider to be a "guitard" you are just as bad yourself, as you are enabling all their bad habits.

Let me illustrate why you shouldn't always rely on electronic tuners and at the same time point out how little an average audience will spot you being out of tune. Some years ago at a Terrortones gig, our guitarist had managed to reset her Boss tuner from 440Hz to 445Hz. During the gig our drummer who was sat behind both amps could hear that something was wrong and kept asking us to check our tuning. Of course both our tuners told us that we were perfectly in tune. Out front, I could hear something a bit weird every so often but since we'd checked out tuning thought that it must be the odd wrong note being played. It wasn't until we were back in the rehearsal room the following week that it became obvious what had happened. However no-one in the audience seemed to notice that anything was badly amiss, and we even picked up an excellent review in the local on-line arts and culture magazine. BTW for those of you who are interested, the difference between 440Hz and 445Hz is just under 20 cents or 1/5 of a semi-tone.

Depending on how wide you like your 12-string neck, I've yet to play a better electric 12 string than this one: [IMG]http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n249/BigRedX/Bass/HohnerTEXIICustom.jpg[/IMG] Comfortably wide neck compared with a Rickenbacker and low-output lipstick tube pickups that give plenty of lovely 12-string shimmer. Unfortunately there are 2 very different Hohner 12-string electrics with the same model number and the other is a rather nasty telecaster shaped thing with unsympathetic hum bucking pickups which is best avoided!

The shape is influenced by the Andreas Shark Bass if I am not mistaken. I'd probably be making an offer on that if the postage wasn't so excessive.

One of the many advantages of having a bass that is constructed with a carbon fibre skin over wood is that it takes a fairly extreme change in conditions for it to go out of tune. I'll generally check the tuning at the sound check and quickly just before playing, but unless one of the machine heads has taken a knock while getting it out of the gig bag it's never more than a few cents out at the most and I could certainly play the whole set without bothering to tune up. I never check the tuning during the set unless I can hear something off while I'm playing although so far it's always turned out to be someone else in the band who is at fault.

Played at The Bodega in Nottingham with my new band "The Death Notes" supporting Scriptures for the album launch gig. Excellent on-stage and FoH sound and almost enough room to throw some shapes on stage: [IMG]http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n249/BigRedX/IMG_0075_zpsj9ordml3.jpg[/IMG] A really good evening all-round. I particularly enjoyed the set from the band on after us - The Madeline Rust.

[quote name='MoonBassAlpha' timestamp='1494244723' post='3294251'] Good photo. You look Numanoid! [/quote] Thanks! Well that suits the new band - post-punk with goth touches. As I always say a great gig photo is more than just throwing some appropriate shapes on stage - you ned good lighting and an excellent photographer too.

From Friday's gig: [IMG]http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n249/BigRedX/IMG_0075_zpsj9ordml3.jpg[/IMG]

Even if you hadn't already been put off power soaks, I haven't yet come across one rated for use with amps above 150W. As others have said they are designed for guitarists who want to drive the valves in the power section of their amp hard.